Last week I shared a link to a woman in France who has a flicker account titled, These Days in French Life.  It’s basically a photographic journey of this woman’s life in France.  What makes her pictures so extraordinary, is that this woman feeds her family on a diet of “scraps.”  Food that has been deemed garbage, inedible, not suitable for sale in a retail market.

I found it fascinating.

After I wrote the story, Sarah C. left me the following comment, and I decided to do a little investigating.

“Yup, this is the way we roll at our house. I get boxes of produce from our local store “for the goats” (who have been in the freezer for a couple months, now). We eat what we can (usually a lot of the box), and save the rest for friends who have chickens or compost it. We’ve gotten some amazing things that I would have never purchased (18 artichokes? Enough tomatoes to make 2 gallons of salsa?)…all for $1/box or less.”

Does this really happen?  Do stores freely giveaway their scraps?  No dumpster diving required? I decided to do a little research.

While I was out running errands, I stopped by my favorite produce market to inquire about possibly picking up “scraps” for my chickens once a week.  Although the shopkeeper was a little hesitant at first, he finally agreed to let me come by once a week and pick up whatever scraps were available on that particular day.  The reason he was a little hesitant was because people had come in before asking for free scraps, and then they don’t show up, leaving him with boxes and boxes of rotting produce. So I thanked him {profusely} and promised I would be back on the set date to pick up the scraps.  What you see in the photo above is four boxes of “scraps” for the chickens {insert big happy smile}.

It took The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird and I two hours to sort through the four boxes of scraps.  In the end we were able to salvage 2 boxes of fresh fruits and vegetables for the chickens, and 2 boxes for us.

In my opinion, there is only one drawback to bringing home free scraps. As soon as you walk through the door, you literally have to drop everything you are doing, sort the food, and quickly figure out what to do with it. Before it truly does become inedible.

So what do you think?

Would you be willing to feed your family scraps others deem inedible?

Maybe you’re feeling a little adventurous, and want to try your hand at dumpster diving instead?

GoHERE to purchase Dive! from Amazon.com. Another documentary on food I thought was interesting was King Korn.